Radiolocation and tracking of automatic identification system signals for maritime situational awareness

Abstract

The Automatic Identification System (AIS), a ship reporting system originally designed for collision avoidance, is becoming a cornerstone of maritime situational awareness. The recent increase of terrestrial networks and satellite constellations of receivers is providing global tracking data that enable a wide spectrum of applications beyond collision avoidance. Nevertheless, AIS suffers the lack of security measures that makes it prone to receiving positions that are unintentionally incorrect, jammed or deliberately falsified.In this work we analyse a solution to the problem of AIS data verification that can be implemented within a generic networks of ground AIS base stations with no need for additional sensors or technologies.The proposed approach combines a classic radio-localisation method based on Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) with an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) designed to track vessels in geodetic coordinates.The approach is validated using anonymised real AIS data collected by multiple base stations that partly share coverage areas. The results show a deviation between the estimated origin of detected signals and the broadcast position data in the order of hundreds of meters, therefore demonstrating the operational potential of the methodology.

Maritime anomaly detection: A review

“…Examples of observation‐based data include space‐based synthetic aperture radar (Vespe & Greidanus, ), radars (Sermi, Mugnai, Cuccoli, & Facheris, ) or maritime patrol aircrafts, remotely piloted aircrafts sensors, electro‐optical images (see Buck et al, ) and video (see Shafer, Harguess, and Forero, ). High frequency radars (see Horstmann, Grasso, Coffin, Gurgel, & Schlick, ; Braca, Grasso, Vespe, Maresca, & Horstmann, ), passive radar (Griffiths & Baker, ), Over the Horizon radar (Langellotti et al, ) and radiolocation of emissions (Papi et al, ) are areas of research for maritime situational awareness and anomaly detection. Information registries and databases : These sources contain information linking a ship identifier as often used for tracking systems, to details about its construction, history, management, safety, and security inspections. Such information is time unvarying or slowly changing if compared to the vessel position and motion.…”

“…Different sensors can complement each other, as addressed by Boraz (), for overcoming AIS spoofing and coverage, radar range, lack of images that cover the entire globe, etc. Finally, time difference of arrival from multiple AIS receivers (Papi et al, ) or the signal strength at the receiver can be used to detect spoofing or on–off switching (Mazzarella et al, ; Mazzarella, Vespe, Tarchi, Aulicino, & Vollero, ).…”

Energy Management Using a Situational Awareness-Centric Ad-Hoc Network in a Home Environment

“…As such, in order to tackle cyber-attacks, enterprises are benefiting from cyber situational awareness framework based on OODA (i.e., observe, orient, decide, and act) technique [3]. Automatic identification system (AIS) is also employed as the collision avoidance mechanism in the maritime situational awareness by which ships send their presence, identification, and location [21]. Deploying wide-area situational awareness (WASA) for power grids has provided valuable data that is used for monitoring, archiving, and envisioning the state of the dynamic system via connected sensors [7].…”

Detection of AIS Closing Behavior and MMSI Spoofing Behavior of Ships Based on Spatiotemporal Data

“…Therefore, from another perspective, the correct detection of AIS closing and spoofing can help maritime authorities to detect illegal activities of ships in time, so that the safety of the relevant sea areas can be guaranteed. The authors of [12] demonstrated the feasibility of radiolocation of AIS emissions, which is the basis for future anti-spoofing and AIS verification applications. The AIS data spoofing mainly includes ship identity (MMSI) spoofing and position spoofing.…”